


All Souls

by Deifire



Category: Eerie Indiana
Genre: Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-03
Updated: 2016-10-03
Packaged: 2018-08-19 10:24:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,028
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8201945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deifire/pseuds/Deifire
Summary: A visit to the Eerie Cemetery.





	

The way Melanie changed was subtle, Janet realized as she followed her best friend through the Eerie Cemetery, their footsteps making crunching noises on the just-fallen leaves. Small differences in the way she held her head and shoulders, in the way she gestured, in the way her gait widened and then gradually slowed as they got closer to their destination, until she was dragging her feet and Janet was having to struggle to keep from accidentally outpacing her.

It was something most people wouldn’t notice. Then again, to most people—save for a few very close friends and certain psychically gifted individuals—Melanie Monroe was no more than Melanie Monroe, body and soul. A beautiful, intelligent, and occasionally reckless young woman who had survived a terrible heart condition and was on her way to a bright future. That there was ever anything, or any _one_ , else to her, most never suspected.

But Janet knew, and the sense of that other coming forward was as strong as it had ever been by the time they stopped in front of a particular gravestone. A large one, topped with a kneeling stone cherub, its hands clasped in front of it, its eyes fixed permanently heavenward. The front of the base bore a simple inscription:

Devon Wilde  
1978 -1991

There had been visitors here recently, Janet noted. The leaves had been swept away from the grave, and someone had left a nearly-fresh bouquet of yellow chrysanthemums. A few had come loose and been scattered along the ground by the wind. Melanie stood staring down at the flowers, but made no move to pick them up.

“It’s nice,” Janet said, at last.

“Nice?” echoed Melanie, wrinkling her nose, and looking back up at the stone figure. “It’s ostentatious. And expensive. And a cherub.”

It was good to know the Zimbardo High PSAT vocabulary list was starting to infect the speech patterns of even Never-Had-to-Study Melanie Monroe. “Okay, yeah,” Janet said. It was unlikely kneeling cherubs had ever fit into Melanie or Devon’s aesthetic. “But it’s nice in that it says the person here was loved a whole lot.”

“You think? Because to me, it just says that person’s parents got talked into spending way too much on a grave marker.”

“I think,” said Janet, carefully, “that sometimes when people lose someone—or come close to losing someone—they realize they haven’t always let them know how much they love them. And sometimes after, it’s too late to say it. Or they still don’t know how. So they try to do it by buying things.”

“Tacky stone cherubs?”

“Or way too many birthday presents.”

Melanie gave her a long look, then shrugged, conceding the point. Fourteen and fifteen had been very good years for Melanie and Janet gift-wise, and both the Monroes and Donners, who'd bonded over Melanie and Janet's friendship and the shared experience of nearly losing a child, were already dropping thinly veiled hints that their biggest sweet sixteen presents would require a license to operate.

“Still wish they'd have spent the money on themselves,” Melanie muttered, scuffing the toe of one sneaker along the base of the statue and dislodging some of the flowers. “Paid off some bills, taken a vacation, maybe moved away from Eerie to somewhere they’d be happier. I mean, what’s buried here wasn’t even all that good looking when they put it in the ground, you know? Still cool, but kind of gross and smashed up. God only knows what it looks like now that the rot’s had time to set in.”

“Like something in one of those horror movies you’re always making us watch?” Janet ventured.

Melanie smiled for the first time since they got here, a crooked grin that managed to light up her entire face. “Yeah. Like I said, still cool.”

“Do you still talk to them?” Janet asked, meaning the Wildes.

“No,” said Melanie, looking down again. “Not really. We send them cards sometimes. On holidays, or to say thank you, on the day. But most of the time, it’s too…”

Too difficult. Too painful. Too complicated. Janet imagined all of those things were true. She put an arm around Melanie’s shoulders.

Melanie leaned against her and embraced her in a one-armed side hug. They stood holding each other, staring at the stone cherub

“I—” Janet began, after a long moment.

She was interrupted by the sound of running footsteps and raised voices nearby.

They broke apart and peered around the side of the gravestone. Marshall Teller was running across the other end of Eerie Cemetery carrying an old book in one hand and a giant, purple squirt gun in the other. Behind him, brandishing what looked like a small crossbow, ran Simon Holmes. Behind Simon, simultaneously struggling to hurry after them and to not look at all like he was hurrying, came Dash, the weird, grey-haired kid who always seemed to be around these days wherever Marshall and Simon were.

Dash was shouting that whatever Marshall was going to do was stupid and going to get them all killed. Marshall was shouting back that nobody had asked Dash anyway, and nobody would care at all if he just went home.

Janet missed Dash’s reply as Melanie turned to her and asked, “Do we want to know what that’s all about?”

Janet made a face. “Do you really need to ask that question?”

Melanie’s worried gaze followed the trio. Her and Devon’s relationship with Marshall went back to when Devon was still alive and before Janet had met any of them, and there were still some complicated feelings there.

“If Mars wanted our help, he would have asked for it,” Janet gently pointed out. “Come on. Want to go get ice cream and play video games, and pretend we never saw that?”

“Yeah,” said Melanie at last, her grin and the way she cocked her head still bearing traces of a presence that was always there, but even now starting to fade into the background, the boy who had given her his heart. “Yeah, that sounds good.”

Janet took her friends’ hand, and together they walked out of cemetery and back to town.


End file.
